Charter Schools

To the editor: As the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education takes on the challenge of finding a new superintendent, I hope it solicits input from the wide spectrum of students and families it serves. While I agree with Stanford education historian Diane Ravitch that our next schools' chief should go to the mat for small class sizes and arts education, a moratorium on new charter schools would be detrimental to learning. ("The survival of public education is at risk. Here's what LAUSD needs to do," op-ed, July 23) The next LAUSD superintendent should embrace multiple learning environments — from charters to magnets to co-located schools —...

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To the editor: As the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education takes on the challenge of finding a new superintendent, I hope it solicits input from the wide spectrum of students and families it serves. While I agree with Stanford...

To the editor: Thanks to Stanford education historian Diane Ravitch for the unobstructed view of what Los Angeles Unified School District should be looking for in its next superintendent. ("The survival of public education is at risk. Here's...

The Los Angeles Unified School District has at most a year to replace Ramon C. Cortines as superintendent. This is a crucial time for the district, which has weathered many controversies in the last decade. It is also a crucial time for American public...

Before choosing Steve Zimmer as their new president, L.A. school board members gave him a lecture: He would need to build consensus, welcome those with differing politics and varying approaches to education, and speak for them as a whole.
Their...

Two new members will join the Los Angeles Board of Education on Wednesday amid shifting political alliances and a pressing need to choose a superintendent of schools.
The newcomers are retired Principal Scott Schmerelson, 63, and charter school...

What if you could create your dream school for your kids, one that's high-tech and hands-on; diverse and genteel; an urban beehive of creativity with a suburban sense of security?
That's what a group of young upscale parents in South Park set out to do...

OCEANSIDE — Rocky Chavez yearned for combat duty during his 28 years in the Marines, but commanders kept him far from the battlefield.
"It's kind of like training for a football game and never getting into the game," said Chavez, a state...

Voters — few though they were — sent some strong messages to the Los Angeles Unified school board Tuesday. That two incumbents were voted out showed justified unhappiness with the current board. People are still mad about the badly mishandled plan to...

Supporters of charter schools won a groundbreaking election victory in Los Angeles this week, putting one of their leaders, for the first time, on the governing board of the nation's second-largest school system.
The triumph of charter school...

By a margin of 1,600 votes, David Ryu became the first Korean American elected to the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, thanks in part to strong support in and around Koreatown.
The health center development director beat out Carolyn Ramsay in a...

Voters are going to the polls in Los Angeles on Tuesday to decide three school board races that will affect the direction of the nation’s second-largest school system.
The campaigns have been dominated by independent spending. Outside groups have...

Total spending in the battle for three spots on the Los Angeles Board of Education has increased sharply since the March primary, reaching nearly $4.6 million, as interest groups vie to influence the nation's second-largest school system.
The top spender...

Charter-school backers and the teachers union are on opposite sides in next week's Los Angeles school board elections. But both sides view the school district's ill-fated and expensive effort to provide iPads to all students as key to victory.
A...

A Los Angeles-based charter group awarded food-service contracts worth millions of dollars to a company partially owned by one of the schools' high-ranking employees, a state investigation has found.
The probe involved Jacqueline Duvivier Castillo, who...

An audit of a charter school with ties to a Board of Education candidate found fault with the school’s financial operations and the way it maintained employee records and other documents.
The audit was released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Unified School...

Granada Hills Charter High School won the national 2015 Academic Decathlon on Saturday, marking the fourth time in the last five years the San Fernando Valley school has claimed the honor.
The school earned 53,592 points out of 66,000 in the scholastic...

For the first time, the Los Angeles Unified School District will open two all-girls' schools next fall.
The Board of Education on Tuesday approved two secondary campuses for girls: one will be overseen directly by L.A. Unified; the other will be an...

The California Supreme Court unanimously decided Thursday that the Los Angeles school district's method for allocating space to charter schools may shortchange them classrooms.
In a decision written by Justice Goodwin Liu, the state’s highest...

Nearly a month after launching a campaign to unionize the largest charter school group in Los Angeles, some teachers are accusing school leaders of violating state laws that allow educators to organize without fear of reprisal.
United Teachers Los...